Time After Time
by Elske
Summary: He talks, and Darcy listens, and sometimes a small part of the back of his mind notices that Darcy is the only woman he’s ever known to let him speak and to listen. Darcy/Simpson. Dimples?
1. Chapter 1

Archie Simpson never would have predicted that the highlight of his day would be talking with one of his students. That's the thing about life, though – sometimes it throws things at a person that they'd never expect. Once upon a time, the highlight of his day was playing music with the Zits, then it became getting good marks in his university classes, then spending time in his very own classroom. And then one day he got Christine back and it all became about her – about making her smile, about kissing her, about getting done with the day just to spend time with her. Spending time with Christine, with Emma, with Jack, that was the best part of his life for a time. But that's the thing – it's that things change.

Talking with Darcy – just talking with her – is unlike anything else in his life right now; unlike a wife who doesn't seem to understand him anymore, unlike a stepdaughter that doesn't respect him and a son that's just like his mother. She tells him that he's the only one she can talk to. She tells him that she likes him because he's not trying to fix her, change her, make her into something she's not. And the funny thing is that it goes both ways.

He can talk, and Darcy will listen. He tells her about Christine and about Daphne and sometimes he just talks about what it means to be Archie Simpson, because some days he's still trying to figure out exactly what it_does_ mean to be Archie Simpson. He talks, and Darcy listens, and sometimes a small part of the back of his mind notices that Darcy is the only woman he's ever known to let him speak and to _listen_.

"The thing about Daphne," he says, "the thing about Daphne is that someone was finally paying attention to me, but in retrospect, I think the secrecy was the most appealing part."

Darcy smiles a shaky half-smile. "A friend told me once that every girl's entitled to a secret." She's trying, but then her smile wavers and her eyes fill with tears.

Archie's sitting perfectly still, not moving not breathing just _waiting_. It's Darcy who moves into his waiting arms. Her composure breaks and she starts crying, silently, into his shirtfront and she's clinging as if her life depends on it. He wraps his arms around her, holding her close – because she's crying and that's what you do when girls cry, he reasons. He feels the sobs shake her body, and then she stills, but doesn't stop clinging. She snuggles in, in fact, presses a kiss against his chest and it's as though time suddenly_stops_.

Maybe she's confused me with her father, Archie reasons, almost desperately, then discards the thought. His heart is racing; he wonders if she notices. As if by instinct, he drops his chin against the top of her head, breathes in the violet scent of her hair, closes his eyes.

The way it's unfolding is inevitable, he realises. There's no stopping now, even if he wanted to stop.

(He doesn't want to stop.)


	2. Chapter 2

Archie Simpson returns home to find that his wife's gone out to dinner with Caitlyn Ryan. Emma's still home – enlisting baby Jack's help in making dinner – but nevertheless the house feels empty, unsettled, _off_. This is nothing new. Things have been off since – the almost-affair? No, since before that, he thinks. What happened with Daphne was a symptom, not a cause. He'd made an attempt at regaining normalcy, thought it had worked for a time, but then things started changing again.

His biggest ally at school used to be Daphne, but she's lost to him forever. His biggest ally in life, Joey Jeremiah, took his daughter and followed his young beautiful fiancée to Calgary. Thinking of Joey makes him think of Diane, twenty-two to Joey's thirty-five, and is that so much of an age difference? And from there it's natural to think of the age difference between twenty-two and seventeen, thinks of _Darcy_, and realises he's blushing.

She trusts him. He would never take advantage of her, he tells himself, and yet he still catches himself calculating age differences, remembering her flower-scented hair, trying to figure out what it would take to make her smile. All he really wants, he thinks, is to find a way to make her smile. To have her think so highly of him as he thinks of her, he realises, and he wonders if such a thing is possible. It probably isn't.

"Emma," he says, a bit too harshly, a bit too desperately.

His stepdaughter looks up at him. "Snake? Are you all right?"

"I'm fine," he lies, fakes a smile. Joey. He needs to talk to Joey. Joey will be able to help. Joey can make sense of this. "How soon is dinner?"

She looks at the clock, winces. "Give us half an hour."

Plenty of time to make a phone call. "Perfect," he says, "I need to go call Joey," and vanishes from the kitchen into his bedroom, where he picks up the cordless phone, dials Joey's phone number, and waits. He's greeted only by Joey and Diane's answering machine, and he realises that he forgot to factor in the time difference. It's only four o'clock in Calgary; Joey and Diane are still at work.

Shutting the cordless off with a single tinny beep, Archie sighs. He just sits there in the growing darkness, waiting – for it to be time to dinner, perhaps, or perhaps just waiting for something indefinable, something to _happen_, something to change his life.

Across town, two sisters are doing their homework in their shared bedroom, like they've been doing for as long as they can remember. Claire's having trouble with her math; out of habit, she peers over at her sister's paper. And then she frowns. "Darcy? I thought your boyfriend was called Peter."

"What?" Darcy's startled out of her daydream. "He is. So?"

"So, who in the world is I Archie /I ? You've got his name written here over and over," she accuses, and Darcy is left with only a blush for an answer.

Archie and Darcy; two names intertwined in a calligraphic heart, and Darcy's pretty sure she's being stupid and even more sure that there's nothing she can do about it.

Author's Notes: 

I was torn between making this a one-shot and extending it. I ended up writing another chapter, so I guess you can see which decision I made here!

Big giant thanks go to **mellifluous cloud** for being the only person to review the first chapter of this. Thank you so much; you really made my day. This is the first fanfic I've written in over a year, and I'm paranoid that it's made of suck.

Thanks also to the 53 people who read this, the five people who put this on their favourites list (!!! What an honour!) and the three people who have an alert for new chapters of this. Hope you're liking it.

Cheers, elske


	3. Chapter 3

Darcy's up early the next morning, in part so that she can avoid more of Claire's constant prying questions before school, in part so that she'll have time to finish the homework that had gone undone the day before. She finds herself at school before almost anyone else; the front doors of the building are unlocked and she heads inside. Instinct brings her to the media immersion lab, but Mr Simpson hasn't arrived yet, and – perhaps because of the computers – the doors to the classroom are locked. No matter. She settles herself down on the floor by the classroom and takes out her English book to begin her reading for Ms Kwan. The subject matter of the story lends itself well to daydreaming, so she makes very little progress before Mr Simpson arrives.

He is flustered when he sees her; he yawns and blushes and nearly drops both his mug of coffee and his room keys. "Good morning, Darcy," he manages to say.

Darcy's blushing too, but she manages to smile up at him. "Good morning. You look tired."

"I am," he admits. "Didn't get much sleep last night." What seems like an eternity of fumbling with his keys finally results in success, and the door is successfully opened. He reaches in, switches on the lights. "All the fault of the time difference to Calgary." Without thinking, he reaches down a hand to help Darcy to her feet.

She clasps his hand, steadies herself as she stands up. "Calgary?" she asks, still clinging to his hand.

"My best friend moved there. A few months ago." He misses Joey. He misses Joey a lot. It was good to talk to him, although he didn't get to say half the things he wanted to. It was difficult – he knew he needed to sleep, and both Diane and Craig were variously heard in the background needing Joey's attention.

"I'm sorry. I never recovered when my best friend moved away. I was thirteen." And maybe, Darcy thinks, maybe if Lindsay hadn't gone to Fredericton, maybe things would have turned out differently. "I don't know who my best friend is now," she realises, takes a moment to ponder this. Lindsay, then Kim from Friendship Club. Then Spinner, and now, possibly…Manny Santos? She realises she's still holding the teacher's hand, and reluctantly relinquishes it.

Archie Simpson smiles to himself. He'd started to tell Joey about Darcy – no specific details, just a hint of his _wanting_. And that made them both think of Julia. "We had this friend, Joey and I," he murmurs. "She was my friend first, a classmate at university, and then she became Joey's. Joey was a ladies' man through and through…" he trails off, smiling again with the memory, "so it didn't surprise any of us when he fell for her. He'd have done anything for her, anything at all. But she didn't ask anything of him. He adored her and he was helpless. And then she shows up on his doorstep with a broken arm. She needs him. Sometimes men like to be _needed_," he muses.

"Then what happened?" Darcy asks, caught up in the story.

"Joey figures out who's responsible, tracks him down, and punches him in the nose." It's an interesting parable, the story of Joey and Julia, and Archie hadn't been planning on telling it. But somehow it fits the mood, just now.

Darcy smiles. "Mr Simpson? If I ever find the guy who did…who…you know," she stumbles a bit on the words. "If I do, I promise you can punch him in the nose."

"It would be an honour," he says solemnly, and it isn't until later he realises that she's drawn all the correct parallels from the parable. Sometimes men like to be needed, and sometimes men lose their hearts to the impossible and are willing to make the impossible possible, never mind age-gaps and abusive husbands and silent sad-eyed sons. Never mind the odds. Never mind.

"Thank you Mr Simpson," says Darcy, then she frowns. "That's not right. Snake? No." A pause, and then, shyly – throatily, as if she knows it's something greatly daring, something she shouldn't get away with – "_Archie_."

The sound of his name said in that voice makes him blush so deeply he can't look at her. The bell rings, and for that he's eternally grateful. Somehow he'll get through the rest of the day.

(He'll stir in the middle of the night, be almost awakened from dreams of her, violet-scented and hesitantly breathing his name.)

Author's Note:

Thank you all so much for the great feedback! Special thanks to **Judy Arlene**, **your Hollywood tragedy x3, mellifluous cloud, maniacmaniac23, **and **miss Hogart** for reviewing. They really mean a lot to me! Thanks. I'd also like to thank all the others out there who are writing great Darcy/Simpson fics. It's so good to feed my addiction with stories! I hope this chapter was as good as the last two were.


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